


One Last Sin

by SonjaJade



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: F/M, No Beta, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-15
Updated: 2016-10-15
Packaged: 2018-08-22 13:45:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8287825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SonjaJade/pseuds/SonjaJade
Summary: Havoc’s spinal injury is repaired, Roy’s vision is restored, there’s one more thing the Colonel wants to try with Dr. Marcoh’s help…





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bay](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bay/gifts).



> Written for Bay's birthday!

Roy blinked as light and color from all directions flooded his eyes for the first time in a week.  It was too much, but not enough at the same time.  He fought against the stinging and the dull pain at the back of his head and forced his eyes to stay open.  He caught glimpses of Knox handing Marcoh a pair of snow blinders, then felt as they were slipped on his face.

“Cool shades, Chief!” Havoc exclaimed from his wheelchair.  “Maybe now that you look two hundred percent cooler, you could snag yourself a girlfriend!”

His team had laughed, and Roy couldn’t help but grin.  “Maybe you’re right.”  He’d slid his eyes toward Riza to judge her reaction to his new look, but his peripheral was blocked by the wide sides of the glasses.

Marcoh sat back, the last of the philosopher’s stone in his hand.  “Apart from the light sensitivity, how does everything look, Mustang?”

“Everything looks great,” Roy answered.  “Things are sharp and crisp, I could see color vividly before you put the blinders on, but I have a question.”  He pointed at his face.  “How long do I have to wear these?”

Marcoh dismissed his concerns with a wave.  “When you feel you don’t need them anymore, you can take them off.  It’s just to help keep your eyes open for now.  In fact, get yourself a regular pair of sunglasses, they’re not as dark and you’ll be able to see colors better.  It’s temporary, I promise.”  He looked down in his palm.  “Well, I was sure this would be used up by now, but it appears it isn’t.”

No one spoke.  It was the little red elephant in the room- the most powerful gem ever created had a bloody story behind it, and everyone in the room knew it.  Eventually, Roy broke that silence.

“I have one more use for that stone, a justifiable one, but I would have to ask that everyone leave the room except you and my adjutant.”  He didn’t miss how Riza’s posture straightened and her eyes widened…  She minutely shook her head, but he didn’t rescind the order for everyone to leave.  After all, she unarmed and not dangerous at the moment.

Knox led the march, Havoc trying to bum a cigarette off of him as they went.  Once the door was closed, he asked Dr. Marcoh if he could keep a very big secret.

“I kept the secret of how to make this stone for many years.  I don’t have very many years left, I think I can handle whatever you need to tell me.”

He told him everything.  He told him who he learned alchemy from, what he had planned to do with his knowledge when he joined the military- and what happened after his master had died.

“I admired him very much, but I’ll never understand why he did what he did to my Lieutenant.  The Elrics said you kept your alchemy notes in coded cookbooks.  I keep mine coded in women’s names and phone numbers.  My master kept his coded on Lt. Hawkeye’s skin.”

Marcoh frowned.  He looked at Riza with apologetic eyes.  “Lieutenant, what did your father do to you?”

“Show him, Riza…”

She visibly tensed, almost as if she were going to refuse his order.  Instead, she rose from her bed and turned her back on Dr. Marcoh.  She untied the gown and slipped it off, Roy catching a far too brief glimpse of her breasts before she held it over her chest.  Marcoh’s jaw hung open in disbelief.

“My god…  He wrote flame alchemy on her back.”

“It was not a fresh tattoo when I first examined it,” Roy remarked as he stood up and gripped her shoulder.  “It hurt her for years, and then when we met in Ishval, and she’d seen firsthand what I was doing with the knowledge I gleaned from the array, it hurt even worse.”

Roy watched as Marcoh approached her, asking if he could examine the burns.  “What happened here,” he asked, outlining the melted parts of her skin.

Riza was trembling, and Roy wanted nothing more than to hold until it stopped.  She answered in a shaky voice, “I wanted to make sure no more flame alchemists could exist… so I asked Col. Mustang to burn it off as best he could.”

The doctor’s old wrinkled fingers touched the scars gently.  “It didn’t heal very well.”

“It hurts a lot,” she murmured.  “But I am grateful for that pain.  There will never be another flame alchemist.”

Roy nodded toward the stone.  “Is there enough left to fix this?” he asked.

“Please, don’t waste the stone’s power on me,” she protested.  “I have no right to ask the souls within that stone to-”

Marcoh interrupted her.  “I think I can fix most of this without the stone, anyway.  Let me see what we can do here.  Would you mind lying down on your stomach for me?”

Roy watched him pull up a chair once she was situated, looking over her scars and the tattoo itself.  He pulled out a felt-tip marker.

“The tattoo ink is the least of our concerns.  Lieutenant, you’re going to feel me drawing on your back with a pen, try to be still."  It was a simple array, one he activated with a soft touch.  Blue light crackled along her spine and neck and as Roy watched, the ink faded away, like chalk on the sidewalk after a hard rain.  All that remained was the evidence his flames touched her.

Another array was drawn onto the largest scar, and once more the light of the reaction filled the room.  Riza gasped and Marcoh examined the result.

“Tell me if you feel any pain here,” he asked as he pressed into the outside edge of the now mostly healed area of the burn.

“It’s much better, but it still hurts some,” Riza answered.

He pulled the small stone from his jacket pocket and drew the array all over her back, making sure to touch all the burns.  The red stone glowed brightly, turning to dust as it repaired the damage.  When the light blinked out and the smell of ozone faded, Riza’s back was clear of all ink and all scarring, even the site where shrapnel had gotten her from an explosion in Ishval.

“I smoothed everything over and severed the connections between the most painful spots.  You might feel some numbness on the surface of your skin where the worst scar was, but your back looks as it must have twenty years ago,” Marcoh said as he patted her shoulder.  “And don’t forget, Lieutenant, you helped save this country, right alongside the Colonel here.  You are as deserving to be free from your pain as anyone else.  Though you have as much Ishvalan blood on your hands as the Colonel and I do, your sacrifice to your body to ensure there would never be another flame alchemist atones for part of it, I’m sure.”

“And you were the only one I know of who buried one of them with your bare hands,” Roy remarked.  “Besides, I’m going to need your help more than ever to rebuild what we destroyed.  I want you at full capacity in the desert with me, not suffering from pain and guilt.”

Marcoh nodded.  “I’m going to see about getting a pair of mirrors so she can see.  I’ll tell the others to stay out until after I return.”  With that, he was out the door, leaving Roy to look after Riza as she accustomed herself to being pain free for the first time in years.

“You didn’t have to do that for me,” she said, sitting up as she continued to clutch her gown over her chest.

He sat down next to her.  “What if I told you I did it for _me_?”

“I wouldn’t believe you.”

“Well, I did.”  His fingers touched the smooth surface of her back, something he hadn’t done since the day he copied the tattoo from her skin- and later that night took her virginity.  “Do you know how hard I cried after I’d done it?  After we went home?”  He shook his head.  “It was a long three week furlough at my aunt’s afterward.  I drank almost the entire time, had the worst nightmares…  And when I was awake, all I could hear were your screams.  Every woman I saw had your face and the voices in my head all screamed like you did.  I swore to myself if there was ever anything I could do to change what I’d done to you, I’d make it happen.”  He watched as tears slipped down her cheeks.  “I kept my promise to myself.  Your back is your own again.  It doesn’t belong to your father or to me anymore.”

Riza’s hand landed on his knee and she squeezed.  “Thank you.  Thank you so much, Roy.”  She laughed as she wiped away her tears.  “But you know my back will always be yours, just like the rest of me, right?”

For the first time in a long time, Roy felt his cheeks flush.  “Well,” he conceded, “I suppose that’s true.  But it’s not like I gave you an engagement ring or anything.  And if you want, you can see other men now without worrying-”

She cut him off with a kiss, one he didn’t expect because of the glasses blocking his peripheral sight.  He let her take what she wanted, and when she pulled back, his heart was pounding in his chest.

“This was better than a ring, and I don’t want anyone else.”

“So when I make it to Führer…”

“I’ll retire.”

He rested her forehead against her.  “We gotta get out of this hospital first.  And make a few days stop at my aunt’s so we can properly celebrate in private.”

Chuckling, she reminded him, “You blew it up, remember?”

“Fuck.”

When Marcoh came in with the mirrors, he brought with him discharge papers for the both of them.  They agreed to attend a celebration dinner at the Armstrong estate, and then they each went their separate ways…

Two days later, Roy went on a ‘fishing trip’ to meet up with ‘Elizabeth’ and Riza ‘caught up’ with her cousin, ‘Raylene’- who happened to be in the same town Roy was going to.


End file.
